Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party (October 10, 2011)

Much has been written about similarities between the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Tea Party. Some have suggested that the occupiers are the left’s answer to Tea Partiers. I see thing differently.

Tea Party dogma holds that government has gotten out of hand. It has become too big and too intrusive. They want to make government small, and they want to be able to conduct their lives without a government that tells them what they can and what they cannot do. They just don’t want government.

Occupy Wall Street objects to who controls our government, and how the power of money is used to make the government work pretty well for the richest among us. They want to return control of the government to “the other 99%,” meaning most of us.

One more thing… it is clear that the Tea Partiers have had a lot of funding from the Koch Brothers. In fact, without such funding, they could not have possibly been able to get as far as they did in terms of organizing to the point of bringing our government to a virtual deadlock. There is no such source of funding (that I know of) associated with the Occupy movement.